December 30, 2011

No, not divide and conquer. Because this post will deal with add-ons in particular. :)

Why are add-ons important? It lets you as a user decide what content you find good enough for the game. Every time the project leaders have to decide on what track or kart they should remove to make place for new ones, they know that they will get complaints. It's just how it is; you can't make everybody happy. But now we actually can, to some degree. Add-ons can be created or uploaded by anyone, so if something gets removed, users can quickly add it to the growing repository of additional content. The only requirements are regarding licensing, which should be one or more Free, preferably DFSG-approved licenses, and the content should not be offensive and suite people of all ages. In other words, content recently removed from the main game should slide right in. Quality or difficulty doesn't matter for an add-on; as long as it works and licensing etc. is okay, it gets approved by the moderators of the stkaddons website.

Stephen (nicknamed sj04736) has steadily improved the website, and it should now have most of the basic features. People can also vote on add-ons there as long as they have an activated account. Why not try some of the additional karts, tracks and arenas available to install from within the game (requires version 0.7.2 or higher)? Or check out the website itself. It's a great piece of work, and Stephen doesn't get as much praise as he deserves, so be sure to send some kind thoughts to him when it all works so smoothly (and when it doesn't, please don't berate him, but file a bug report). ;)

Two yummy pie charts:As you can see, there's a definite interest in add-ons. If you manage to create a particularly good one, it may even go on to conquer the game! Or, in other words, become part of the default set of karts, tracks or arenas.

Finally, if you like what we are doing, and got some more money to spend this year, why not make a donation? We'd be happy to take some of it off your back in order to further the game. ;)In addition (or instead), you might want to donate to the awesome TuxFamily site, which hosts all the add-ons plus many other Free projects for no monetary compensation. Ain't that worth a few dollars if you've got some to spare? :)

Will 2012 be the year of SuperTuxKart on the desktop? Let's wait and see. ;)